Yesterday I was browsing through a pile of quotations I had collected over the years that had made me laugh, chuckle or nod sagely. Here’s a few of the better ones.I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

“And it should be considered that nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than to put oneself at the head of introducing new orders.” —Niccolo Machiavelli.

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” —Bertrand Russel.

“A neurotic is the man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. And a psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.” —Anon.

“I am always prepared to recognise that there can be two points of view. Mine, and one that is probably wrong.” —John Gorton.

“If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it.” —William A Orton.

“Never trust governments absolutely, and always do what you can to prevent them from doing too much harm.” —John Passmore.

“The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.” —Gloria Leonard.

“Veni Vidi Visa: I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.” – Bob Levey’s “Best T-shirts of the Summer”.

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” —Abraham Lincoln.

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” —Mark Twain.

“Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek headed men and such as sleep o’ nights; Yond Cassius has a lean an hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.” —Julius Caesar. Act 1, sc 2.

“Trickle-down theory — the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.” —J K Galbraith, economist

“I think sometimes the Prime Minister should be intimidating. There’s not much point being a weak, floppy thing in the chair, is there?” — Margaret Thatcher.

“It’s not the men in my life that counts — it’s the life in my men.” —Mae West.

“What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.” —Richard Harkness

“The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.” —C Northcote Parkinson.

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” —George Bernard Shaw

“A woman drove me to drink and I never even had the courtesy to thank her.” —W C Fields.

“It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure why take the chance?” —Ronald Reagan.

“We owe a lot to Edison — if it wasn’t for him we’d be watching television by candlelight.” —Milton Berle.

“As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honour and praise. The next, the people fear, and the next the people hate. When the best leader’s work is done, the people say ‘we did it ourselves”. —Lao -Tzu

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” —Albert Einstein.

“Now there’s a man with an open mind – you can feel the breeze from here!” —Groucho Marx.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” —Albert Einstein.

“Happiness is a good martini, a good meal, a good cigar and a good woman . . or a bad woman, depending on how much happiness you can stand.” —George Burns.

“He may look like an idiot and talk like and idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.” —Groucho Marx.

“To err is human – but it feels divine!!” —Mae West.

“This little flower, this delicate little beauty, this cream puff, is supposed to be beyond personal criticism. He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” —Paul Keating.

“You will always find some Eskimo ready to instruct the Congolese on how to cope with heatwaves.” —Stanislaw J Lec.

“No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats remember that approximately two billion Chinese people couldn’t care less.” —Abraham Lazlo.

“A dress has no meaning unless it makes a man want to take it off.” —Francoise Sagan.

“All I ask is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.” — Spike Milligan.

“If it squirms, it’s biology; if it stinks, it’s chemistry’ if it doesn’t work it’s physics and if you can’t understand it, it’s mathematics.” — Magnus Pyke.

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, as O.J. Simpson once told me.” —Denis Leary.

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” —Lily Tomlin.

“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it probably needs a little more time in the microwave.” —Lori Dowdy.

“A man came to my door and said, ‘I’d like to read your gas meter.” I said, ‘Whatever happened to the classics’.” —Emo Philips.

“It’s more than magnificent, it’s mediocre.” —Samuel Goldwyn.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” —H.L. Mencken.

“I do most of my work sitting down; that’s where I shine.” —Robert Benchley.

“Does that screwdriver really belong to Philip?” —George Carlin.

“The Australians appear to a man to regard their politicians as time-serving crooks or simple-minded hirelings.” —Jim Cameron.

“A man’s home is his wife’s castle.” —Alexander Chase.

“The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music does.” — Robert Helpmann.

“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle” —Gloria Steinem.

“Being an MP is a good job, the sort of job all working-class parents want for their children – clean, indoors and no heavy lifting. What could be nicer?” —Diane Abbott.

“You know, I go to the theatre to be entertained. I don’t want to see plays about rape, sodomy and drug addiction — I can get all that at home.” —Peter Cook.

“Because he spills his seed upon the ground”. — Dorothy Parker when asked why she called her canary Onan.

“A woman’s place is in the wrong.” — James Thurber.

“My country right or wrong, is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober’” —G. K Chesterton.

“I am sorry that I can’t address the people of Latin America in their own language – Latin.” —Dan Quayle.

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About deknarf

Australian born and bred who has spent most of his working life in R&D and IP management with earlier forays in the newspaper industry and martial arts. Fortunate enough to be living in one of the best countries in the World, even though I might get grumpy with it from time to time.

Australian born and bred who has spent most of his working life in R&D and IP management with earlier forays in the newspaper industry and martial arts. Fortunate enough to be living in one of the best countries in the World, even though I might get grumpy with it from time to time.